After seeing all of the amazing photos online of Franklin-Christoph's pens, especially the "ice" models, I knew I had to have one. Never has a company impressed me as much with their unique designs as Franklin-Christoph has. Of course this review isn't about the pen itself, (that will come soon!) but about the ink that I bought along with the pen.

Midnight Emerald is a fairly new ink to the Franklin-Christoph line, and is one that I'm convinced will be one of their best sellers in due time. I likely wouldn't have given an ink of this shade a second glance if it hadn't been for seeing Jeff Abbot's post on The Pen Addict. He'd bought the same pen I was interested in, and when I saw the way this ink looked in the barrel of an eyedropper-converted Model 40 Pocket, I knew I had to have it.

Arguably the best thing about Midnight Emerald is its incredible shading properties. With my medium cursive italic nib, it lays down enough ink to give quite a nice variation in color. Depending on the speed at which you write, the ink will go from a deep blueish-green to a lighter medium teal. It isn't overly saturated, and flows wet, but not so wet as to drown out the variations in color. It doesn't feather at all on your standard fountain pen friendly papers, and there's no ghosting or bleed to speak of.

Shortly after picking up a bottle of Midnight Emerald, I grabbed a sample of Noodler's Squeteague to see how it compared. It's actually very close in comparison, but leans more green than blue, unlike Midnight Emerald which exhibits more blue than green. A lot of folks also compare Midnight Emerald to Sailor Yama-dori, though I've not had the opportunity to do the comparison myself yet. From the pictures in Jeff's post, I'd say they're very close.

Chromatography shows the ink to be comprised of a royal blue, brown-ish red, and yellow tones. I was surprised to see very little green in the mix!

If you've not tried Midnight Emerald yet, you definitely should! Unfortunately, Franklin-Christoph doesn't do ink sampling, but if you're a fan of Yama-dori or Squeteague and want an ink with incredible shading, then it's worth picking up a bottle. You can pick it up at franklin-christoph.com for $12.50/2oz.